Flying squirrel dives into photographer's home

A flying squirrel got a tour of a B.C. family's home last weekend.

On Sunday, a Shuswap photographer felt uneasy when she saw a small creature moving about her home.

"I thought it was a mouse at first," said Selina Metcalfe, who lives in Canoe, B.C., a rural community nine kilometres northeast of Salmon Arm.

"Then I saw the fluffy tail on it and realized it wasn't a mouse."

It was a flying squirrel.

Metcalfe said it likely came in through an open door, though it could have crawled in through her unfinished basement.

Though it was cute, Metcalfe knew she had to get it outside.

"I told my son to grab a sheet that we could throw over it."

But, that didn't work.

So, she and her son tried to lure it out using cashews. The flying squirrel didn't bite.

They tried rounding it up into a basket and "shooing" it out the door, but again to no avail.

"It was pretty calm and timid," she said. "It didn't seem like it was stressed at all. It was very inquisitive. It would come quite close to us and sit at my feet. It didn't seem overly scared."

Metcalfe was worried her two dogs would come into the house and get ahold of the small rodent and then it would all be over.

A curious squirrel

After touring the kitchen, dining room, laundry room and even some of Metcalfe's hanging dresses, the squirrel was trapped on an enclosed porch, where it crawled into a side-table drawer.

From there, Metcalfe was able to move it outside.

All this happened in about 20 minutes, Metcalfe said, and without damaging anything in the house.

"I'm not a fan of mice and I imagined at first that it would be similar to that, but it wasn't," she said. "It moved very differently from a mouse and it was calm and it almost seemed curious."

With files from Tara Copeland

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